Hi everyone! Welcome to our first ship balance thread of 2013! Today we've got a set of battlecruisers for you, the former Tier 1 and Tier 2 BCs, re-branded Combat Battlecruisers.

As with all the tiericide efforts, we are aiming for these ships to have roughly comparable power levels. To that end most of the former Tier 1 ships are getting slots and most of the former Tier 2 ships are losing slots. We gave them EHP closer to the averages of the old Tier 1s and damage closer to the averages of the old Tier 2s.These ships are getting less dramatic changes than some of the smaller classes but we still expect the meta to change noticeably.

The biggest changes will be seen by the Prophecy and the Cyclone, which are both getting changed weapon bonuses. The Proph is becoming an heavy tanking droneboat with the choice of missiles or turrets in the highslots (similar to how we have been using the highs of the smaller Amarr droneboats throughout this balance pass).The Cyclone is swapping its projectile bonus for a missile RoF bonus, giving it the ability to spew missile of any damage type desired. This should help provide more variety of ships to Minmatar pilots who enjoy Breacher/Talwar/Bellicose gameplay and want to go bigger.

We're planning to release these ships in the Retribution 1.1 release scheduled for Feb 19th (Updated with new date) so that we can keep the balance train rolling steadily. I'm working to figure out the earliest point we can get them on a test server so that I can start getting hands on feedback from you all. As always these stats are subject to change and we welcome all the feedback you can provide.

Hoplite Brigade

Its a new day for cyclones. Will we see fleet cyclone doctrines? I don't have a lot of experience with them, but they seem like they could become a better missile boat than the drake. One question will be comparative cost. If it can hit as hard, while sacrificing a little tank for better mobility at a sizeably reduced cost to the drake, they may be the favored ship.

And as for the Harbinger, back of the envelope math says -1 turret and buffing damage by 5% still ends up being a slight buff (especially since it means more/same damage for less cap). Plus you get more drones in the reserve and a cap recharge boost.

Also with the general rule of +drone capacity for the T1s it may mean that they could end up fitting to a wider more flexible support BC for small gangs.

Care to comment on BPO mineral requirement changes, or will we have to wait for the test server for those?

We'll be following the same general idea as previous tiericide classes, except that the former Tier 3 BCs will continue to require more minerals than the Combat BCs due to their role and use of large turrets.

Aryth wrote:

Do you think you guys want to do BC then BS by Summer? Is that within the realm of doable?

I'm not going to make promises until we have the planning for Summer further along, but we'll be getting as much done as quickly as we can time and resources permitting.